Thursday, 18 September 2014

MARTINA LAIRD to star in new play The House That Will Not Stand at the Tricycle Theatre

Coinciding with the UK's Black History Month in October, a new play The House That Will Not Stand will be playing at the Tricycle Theatre London.

Starring Martina Laird as Beartrice, the play is a bewitching new drama of desire, jealously, murder and voodoo.

"You may be the wealthiest colored woman in New Orleans but you built this house on sand, lies and dead bodies."

Martina Laird plays Beartrice. Her theatre work includes Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (National Theatre and tour), Hopelessly Devoted (Birmingham REP), Inheritance (Live Theatre), All the Little Things We Crushed (Almeida Theatre), Bad Blood Blues (Stratford East), Mules (Young Vic), Othello(Donmar Warehouse), The Five Wives of Maurice Pinder (National Theatre), and for the RSC, Arabian Nights (also West End and world tour), The White Devil, Three Hours After Marriage and Troilus and Cressida.

New Orleans, 1836. Following an era of French colonial rule and relative racial acceptance, Louisiana's 'free people of color' are prospering. Beatrice has become one of the city's wealthiest women through her relationship with a rich white man.

However, when her partner mysteriously dies, the foundations of freedom she has built for herself and their three unwed daughters begins to crumble. Society is changing, racial divides are growing, and as the household turns on each other in their fight for survival, it could cost them everything.